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"Every happiness that a man enjoys, and almost every friendship that he cherishes, rest upon illusion; for, as a rule, with increase of knowledge they are bound to vanish. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, a man should courageously pursue truth, and never weary of striving to settle accounts with himself and the world. No matter what happens to the right or to the left of him,—be it a chimaera or fancy that makes him happy, let him take heart and go on, with no fear of the desert which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain: that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants to remain undeceived, let him in his inmost being feel his own worth. For to feel the lack of it is not merely the greatest, but also the only true affliction; all other sufferings of the mind may not only be healed, but may be immediately relieved, by the secure consciousness of worth. The man who is assured of it can sit down quietly under sufferings that would otherwise bring him to despair; and though he has no pleasures, no joys and no friends, he can rest in and on himself; so powerful is the comfort to be derived from a vivid consciousness of this advantage; a comfort to be preferred to every other earthly blessing. Contrarily, nothing in the world can relieve a man who knows his own worthlessness; all that he can do is to conceal it by deceiving people or deafening them with his noise; but neither expedient will serve him very long."

yeah me on reddit zen then I suddenly got a wider view when this guy started pushing Nazi mysticism as zen !

i asked my self what the hell I was doing there, trying to educate schizophrenic morons and in the case of some, drug brain damaged as well !

I was doing something, had some mission and then you get a different perspective and walk away from it ! :o()

I have wasted a lot of fruitless time in the last years trying to "remedy" zen, you have to be accepting about making this sort of mistake and in fact you have to squeeze all the benefit from a bad experience by shifting to the next plane and taking on board everything from that experience which is that zen is a cot case and the internet gives every mad dog a voice and drowns out sense which is what mad dogs do............

just walk away from it and like a toxic pack they all turn on themselves and spend their time snapping at each other and damaging themselves

"This is the vortex andwhirlpool, the centre of human life today on the earth. Now the tide risesand now it sinks, but the flow of these rivers always continues. Here itseethes and whirls, not for an hour only, but for all present time, hour byhour, day by day, year by year.

Here it rushes and pushes, the atoms triturate and grind, and,eagerly thrusting by, pursue their separate ends. Here itappears in its unconcealed personality, indifferent to all elsebut itself, absorbed and rapt in eager self, devoid and strippedof conventional gloss and politeness, yielding only to get its own way;driving, pushing, carried on in a stress of feverish force like a bullet,dynamic force apart from reason or will, like the force that lifts the tidesand sends the clouds onwards. The friction of a thousand interests evolves acondition of electricity in which men are moved to and fro withoutconsidering their steps. Yet the agitated pool of life is stonilyindifferent, the thought is absent or preoccupied, for it is evident thatthe mass are unconscious of the scene inwhich they act.

But it is more sternly real than the very stones, for all thesemen and women that pass through are driven on by the push ofaccumulated circumstances; they cannot stay, they must go,their necks are in the slave's ring, they are beaten likeseaweed against the solid walls of fact. In ancient times,Xerxes, the king of kings, looking down upon his myriads, wept to think thatin a hundred years not one of them would be left. Where will be thesemillions of to-day in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask,Where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour? If they wither awaylike summer grass, will not at least a result be left which those of ahundred years hence may be the better for? No, not one jot! There will notbe any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement; itvanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing willbe there, for nothing is there now. There will be no more sum or result thanaccumulates from the motion of a revolving cowl on a housetop. Nor do theyreceive any more sunshine during their lives, for they are unconscious ofthe sun.

I used to come and stand near the apex of the promontory of pavement whichjuts out towards the pool of life; I still go there to ponder. Burning inthe sky, the sun shone on me as when I rested in the narrow valley carved inprehistoric time.Burning in the sky, I can never forget the sun. The heat of summer is drythere as if the light carried an impalpable dust; dry, breathless heat thatwill not let the skin respire, butswathes up the dry fire in the blood. But beyond the heat and light, I feltthe presence of the sun as I felt it in the solitary valley, the presence ofthe resistless forces of theuniverse; the sun burned in the sky as I stood and pondered. Is there anytheory, philosophy, or creed, is there any system orculture, any formulated method able to meet and satisfy each separate itemof this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by whichhope, by which look forward? Not a mere illusion of the cravenheart--something real, as real as the solid walls of fact against which,like drifted sea-weed, they are dashed; something to give each separatepersonality sunshine and a flower in its own existence now; something toshape this million-handed labour to an end and outcome that will leave moresunshine and more flowers to those who must succeed? Something real now, andnot in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and the sun burns. Canany creed, philosophy, system, or culture endure the test and remainunmolten in this fierce focus ofhuman life?"